Cuban Friday: Summit of the Americas, WAQI, Felix Perez and Luis Tiant

Cuba is the focus of the upcoming Summit of the Americas, and the focus of today's post.

Earlier this week, United States president Barack Obama removed some restrictions on American money and goods flowing toward Cuba. Today, the head of the Organization of American States said he will ask its members to readmit Cuba after isolating the country from talks over the past 47 years.

This dovetails nicely with something I wanted to mention here. Native Cubans recently lost their only ability to hear MLB games on the radio when Florida Marlins broadcasts on WQBA 1140 AM in Miami (with Cuban broadcasters Felo Ramirez and Luis Yiki Quintana) changed over to WAQI 710 AM prior to this season. This effectively eliminated any chance for native Cubans to keep track of MLB baseball. This is all being reported to me by my contacts there—I can't actually find a press release announcing this change, although WAQI 710 is now the official Spanish-language home of the Florida Marlins. Check out this forum; it seems the bandwidth is bigger now under WAQI.

So...what gives? It seems like they should be hearing it better than they were. Perhaps it's getting jammed? Anyone?

***

Also in the news, Jorge Arangure Jr. of ESPN reports that talks have broken down between the New York Yankees and exiled Cuban prospect Felix Perez. It's on ESPN Insider so I won't bother linking (it requires a subscription) but it looks like Perez is being detained with visa trouble in the Dominican Republic, and the Yanks have some questions about Perez' actual age. According to Arangure, Cubans aren't subject to the same age investigations as other Latin American prospects, so he isn't likely to face the one-year mandatory suspension for prospects who lie about their age. He quotes one international scouting director on Perez:

"He had a well-built mature body with some stiffness. I never saw the speed he supposedly has, and his swing was a bit stiff. I just did not see a carrying tool or ability in the range they were talking about."

Sounds like there's at least one scout out there who hasn't given up the romantic notion that big-league ballplayers need to sell jeans...

Perez is (for now) twenty years old and comes from the Isla de Juventud (Island of Youth). He's a left-handed hitting centerfielder who Baseball America calls "a raw talent." In two seasons in the Nacional Series he hit only .271.

***

Finally, the Boston Globe ran a moving piece on former big-league pitcher Luis Tiant. Tiant, a three-time All-Star and winner of 229 games, journeys home in a forthcoming documentary titled, The Lost Son of Havana, opening Apr. 23 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. If anyone goes, post a review here...

FBI Investigation into MLB Scouting Still Ongoing

The FBI continues its investigation into Major League Baseball’s Dominican Republic scouting programs. The whole thing is bound to get messier, so I want to establish a timeline now before there are simply too many conflicting stories to straighten out. Basically, for the past year, the feds have been investigating the skimming of bonuses from Latin American prospects by MLB personnel. Here’s how it’s gone down:

July 2, 2006: The Washington Nationals sign sixteen-year-old Dominican shortstop Esmailyn Gonzalez to a $1.4m signing bonus. Gonzalez is discovered by Nationals special assistant (and former World Series MVP) Jose Rijo. After signing, Gonzalez makes it clear he wanted to sign with the Nationals because of Rijo.

May 16, 2008: The Chicago White Sox fire scouting director Dave Wilder when they discover he is under investigation by the FBI for skimming off bonuses paid to Dominican Republic prospects.

July 14, 2008: ESPN reports that Washington Nationals general manager Jim Bowden and special assistant Jose Rijo are under investigation for their roles in the ongoing scandal surrounding the signing of Dominican Republic players. Bowden and Rijo deny any wrongdoing. (The relationship between Bowden, Rijo, and the Domincan Republic dates to the late 1990s and early 2000s when Bowden was GM of the Cincinnati Reds. He used Rijo’s training facility to cultivate talent for the Reds’ organization.)

Aug 5, 2008: The New York Times reports several New York Yankees scouts have been placed on leave pending an investigation by the FBI into their Latin American scouting practices. Six to eight teams are reportedly under investigation.

Aug 16, 2008: The New York Yankees fire two scouts who reportedly took kickbacks from Dominican players they helped sign. The Yankee employees are identified as director of Latin American scouting Carlos Rios and Ramon Valdivia, the team’s Dominican Republic scouting director.

Feb 17, 2009: Esmailyn Gonzalez reveals that he falsified identification papers and is not (by now) nineteen years old, but actually twenty-three years old. Oh, and his name is actually Carlos Alvarez Daniel Lugo.

Feb, 26, 2009: Jose Rijo is fired.

Mar 1, 2009: Jim Bowden resigns.

Mar 30, 2009: ESPN’s Peter Gammons reports that MLB commissioner Bud Selig has given MLB security an open checkbook to try and clean up the mess in the Dominican Republic. Possibly as many as 70 prospects—some "big names" apparently—are being detained while the government sorts through the plethora of potentially-falsified names, birth certificates, etc.

So what are people saying? ESPN The Magazine's Jorge Arangure Jr. lists six ways to fix Dominican Republic baseball. The Magazine also ran a nice feature recently on what it's like to be a prospect in the DR.

It's clear to me, anyway, that no matter the problems, the system as it stands now is ruthlessly efficient at one thing: churning out MLB-caliber ballplayers. How we protect those ballplayers is the question.

MLB New Import Tracker (Apr 5-13, 2009)

Welcome to the first installment of the 2009 MLB New Import Tracker, where we track the progress of each international signing at the major-league level throughout the season...

Kenshin Kawakami, SP—#11—Atlanta Braves
Birthplace: Tokushima, Japan
After winning his first (and only) start this week, Kenshin Kawakami is on pace to win 32 games. He drew an easy matchup with his first assignment, taking the hill against the Washington Nationals. He struck out eight, walked four, and allowed four runs in six innings to get the win.

He had a shaky first inning (blame those "It's my first game in America" nerves), when, after getting two quick outs, he walked the next two batters and gave up a run-scoring single to Nick Johnson. He also served up a two-run bomb to Ryan Zimmerman in the third. But in his last two innings of work he retired the side in order.

It's nice to see his career strikeout rate carry over (so far) in the U.S. (Of course, the Nationals' lineup is also chock-full of free-swingers.) But Kenshin's fastball was clocking in the low 90s, and he mixed this with a mid-80s slider and a changeup that registered at 67-68 mph. No sign so far of the shuuto.

His next start comes at home against Anibel Sanchez and the Florida Marlins.



Koji Uehara, SP—#19—Baltimore Orioles
Birthplace: Osaka, Japan
Like his fellow countryman Kenshin Kawakami, Koji Uehara is now on pace for 32 (or so) wins after besting the New York Yankees 7-5 in his MLB debut.

Uehara went five innings, allowing one run on five hits and a walk. There were some troubling signs, however. Not only did he fail to strike out a single batter, he coaxed only three groundballs (compared to 12 flyballs), which will not continue to be a recipe for success at Camden Yards. He's gonna have to keep the ball down...and find a way to miss a few bats.

Regardless, East Windup Chronicle liked what they saw while also acknowledging the danger signs I mentioned above. But his performance against the Yankees was exactly what fans of Japanese baseball have come to expect: pinpoint control, keeping hitters off-balance with a split-finger fastball and that fancy new changeup he learned in spring training.

Fans of the NBL were keeping an eye on this one, as Uehara faced-off against former Japanese star Chien-Ming Wang, as well as Hideki Matsui (otherwise known as "Godzilla"). Matsui went 0-for-3; Yang was pegged with the loss, his first on the road in his last nine tries, dating back to 2007.

Unfortunately, the matchups don't get any easier for Uehara: in his next two starts he'll face the Texas Rangers (in Arlington) and the Boston Red Sox (at Fenway). Let's hope he figures out how to keep the ball down before then...

World Baseball Classic: More Deep Thoughts

Former big-league pitcher Todd Jones is blogging for The Sporting News. In his most-recent post he tosses out a few reactions to USA's 2009 performance in the World Baseball Classic. This one jumped out at me:

OK, Team USA's starting pitching wasn't great. Here's one way to fix that: use your top prospects. They don't have to worry about preparing for a long season. Get the young guns ready early, then have them take off some starts after the tournament. There would be less worry about injuries, and you'd still be growing the game by showcasing the future.

This is not a bad thought. In fact, it's a pretty good one. Not only would these prospects take the hill each game feeling like they had something to prove, even the most-highly regarded draft pick would be less of a finacial risk (and less of a financial investment at that point in their career) than an established frontline starter. What better way for the young guns to prove themselves than on an international stage in the intensity of a playoff-like atmosphere?

Sadly, I suspect MLB teams value their kids too much to let them fly around the world unattended, with no one to monitor their regimens or tuck them into bed at night. Letting a guy like Carlos Silva jet off to Miami to pitch for Venzuela is one thing. Letting a kid with tremendous upside, somebody like Trevor Cahill for example, is quite another.

Still, Jonesie may be onto something.

Women's Baseball to 2016 Olympics?

The International Baseball Federation (IBAF) announced yesterday they hope to add women’s baseball to the 2016 Olympic slate. Quoting IBAF president Dr. Harvey W. Schiller:

"There has been a great amount of talk about adding women's baseball over the past year, but recently the growth of the sport in places where baseball is already popular, as well as the request by new federations to increase the number of young girls playing in baseball, has led us to move ahead and amend our 2016 proposal."

Right. Because baseball—not not to mention women's softball—is so insanely popular all over the world they cut them both from the 2012 Olympics.

The press release cracks me up, so much so I need to continue to quote verbatim:

Currently over 500,000 young women play baseball around the world, with the number growing exponentially every year. Two weeks ago, Eri Yoshida became the first female to pitch in Japanese professional baseball, striking out the first batter she faced and touching off an immediate growth of young Japanese women interested in baseball.

As if hundreds of thousands of Japanese girls suddenly threw away their strapyas, grabbed their brothers’ baseball mitts, and ran outside for a game of catch! How anything can touch off an immediate growth of anything else is beyond me—isn’t growth something that is inherently measured over time? It all just seems a bit...overly cheery. Color me skeptical.

Look, I’m not against gender equality when it comes to athletic disciplines. You hear people complain about it sometimes, especially in regards to the NCAA, where maybe a University is perceived to support a women’s discipline just because they need to even up with the men. And even if that does happen from time to time, it's not necessarily a bad thing. And as for athletes like Danica Patrick (wait, are race-car drivers athletes?) or Michelle Wie, who reguarly compete against men, I say go for it.

But all athletic events are not created equal. Women excel at some (or are just more interesting to watch), while men excel at others. I dig women’s skull more than men's; the same goes for soccer, polo, fencing, and yes, sometimes even basketball. But do we really need gender equivalents in every Olympic event? Let's hope not.

For example, I'm sure we're all in agreement that the longer we avoid men's rhythmic gymnastics, the better off we all are. The women's event is punishment enough—and always on during prime time, at that!

It's not that I don't want to watch women play baseball. I do. A League of Their Own was cool. But surely the IBAF has better things to do…like making sure men’s baseball makes the 2016 Olympics.

World Baseball Classic: Pay to Play?

At parties, people tend to know that I'm a baseball fan, so they'll start conversations with me about the MLB season or, most recently, the World Baseball Classic. I had a conversation last night about this most recent WBC, and it got me thinking about a couple of things, namely the apathy of most American fans toward the tournament and (ok, I'll say it) the whining by some of the U.S. players as the tournament wore on.

At this party, a friend of mine was mimicking a certain American ballplayer, imagining his internal dialogue as said player anticipated the WBC: "What? They expect me to play hard? For free?" And of course, being (as usual) slow on the take-up, it hadn't really occured to me until then that the somewhat lackadaisical performance on the part of the Americans might boil down, not to fear of injury or lack of mental preparation, but to the simple fact they're not being paid to play.

In the early part of the twentieth century, MLB players would barnstorm during the off-season—John McGraw would take his New York Giants down to Cuba; Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig toured the American plains putting on home run exhibitions; etc. In Peter C. Bjarkman's A History of Cuban Baseball, the author details how these barnstorming tours—though largely ignored by American fans at the time—were more than merely a chance for Negro league or Cuban players to pit themselves against American All-Stars like Ty Cobb...they were the only place in the world where fans could watch white players and black players and Latin American players face-off against one another and measure their talents and achievements. MLB was segragated; few Latinos played in the big leagues. And only recently, through the well-meaning activities of the Committee on African-American Baseball (a nominating committee for The National Baseball Hall of Fame) have some of these long-overlooked baseball stars (like Martin Dihigo) begun to receive their historical due.

That injustice could be several posts by itself, and is in fact the subject of many fine, book-length works. But to go back to the point my friend made at this recent party: those players who barnstormed in Cuba and Mexico and Venezuela were not doing it for philanthropic reasons, or even nationalistic ones—they were getting paid. As much as $1,000 per game, according to Bjarkman, if the player was Babe Ruth in 1920.

Maybe Major League Baseball, flush with cash by increased attendance, the success of the WBC, and the meteoric rise of MLB Media, really oughta think about kicking those players who choose to participate in the WBC a little coin. I know, I know. It's a shame that in this day and age we should even have to talk about such a thing...why can't they just play for pride...blah, blah, blah. But if each country pays out $100K per player for each tournament victory, or for each time their nation advances to a subsequent round, maybe we'd see more players—especially American-born players—more eager to volunteer their spring trainings toward reprsenting the Red, White and Blue.

(There are counterpoints to this argument of course, drawn from everyday life. Most attorneys work a few per diem cases each year; doctors frequently volunteer their time in under-served parts of the world. And who doesn't know an accountant who does taxes for each and every one of his friends and relatives...for free? So maybe it's enough that, given that they're donating their time to entertaining the masses, the WBC participants play at all...)

As for the indifference of the American fan base, there may not be much we can do. As a country, Americans have been largely indifferent to baseball played outside the United States for more than a century...only in the last twenty-five or so years have we even had the courage to recognize (and post-humously elect to our Hall of Fame) players like Dihigo who, as the only player elected to the Hall of Fame in four countries (the US, Cuba, Venezuela and Mexico), was not only dominant for his era but arguably one of the best players of all-time.

Anyway, it was interesting—if not altogether heartening—to read that American indifference goes way back... there's historical precedent. That's all I'm saying.

MLB New Import Tracker 2009: Kenshin Kawakami

Thirty-three-year-old Kenshin Kawakami became the first Japanese-born player in Atlanta Braves history when he signed for three years and $23M this past December. At his first American press conference, he immediately ingratiated himself with the hometown media, introducing himself by saying:

“Hello, my name is Kenshin Kawakami—y’all can call me Kenshin.”

Pretty funny stuff.

The Braves either outbid or out-bargained several other ballclubs to sign Kenshin, including the St. Louis Cardinals and Baltimore Orioles. GM Frank Wren and current advisor (and former GM) John Schuerholz wanted to bring a Japanese player to Atlanta, and they found their man in Kenshin, who posted a career 112-72 record over 11 seasons for the Chunichi Dragons of the Nippon Baseball League.

His career strikeout-to-walk ratio is just south of 4/1; in 2004, his banner season, he went 17-7 with a 3.32 ERA and 177 Ks en route to taking home the Sawamura Award and being named MVP of the Central League. In 2006 he became the highest-paid pitcher in Japan.

Stateside fans saw him most recently in the 2008 Olympics—he entered the Bronze Medal Game against the USA in relief, with the score tied at four, and gave up a double and two-run homer to cost Japan their shot at a medal.

In Atlanta he'll slide into the fourth spot in the starting rotation behind Derek Lowe, Jair Jurrjens, and Javier Vazquez.* This should be a nice, low-key way for Kenshin to get a taste of big-league baseball. He's not being relied upon to be the ace of the staff, and there's nowhere more laid back than Atlanta (any TBS broadcast proves this point—watching the Braves on TBS provides nearly as good a nap as any Grand Slam tournament).**

Stuff-wise, according to NPB Tracker, Kenshin features a cut fastball which tops out in the low 90s. He can follow that up with a slow curve, a shuuto (which is sort of a "reverse slider" that, thrown by a right-hander, breaks down and in on right-handed batters), and a forkball. The same article goes on to say that Kenshin and new MLB import Koji Uehara (who I previewed here) taught Kenshin the forkball, and there's a friendly rivalry between the two men. Should be fun to watch them compete as we track their progress over the course oftheir first major league seasons.

Kenshin will make his first start at home in Turner Field on Friday, Apr. 10 against the Washington Nationals.

*By the by, do the Braves suddenly have the most international rotation in baseball? By my count their five-man rotation represents America (Lowe), Dutch Curacao (Jurrjens), Puerto Rico (Vazquez), Japan (Kenshin) and Mexico (Campillo). They've got Pool A of the World Baseball Classic covered...

**Which is not to say I don't mourn the loss of Braves-game coverage here in Chicago, I do. When TBS went off the air up here, I felt it keenly. Keenly, I tell you. Now I have to try and nap on Saturday afternoons with a white noise machine, when once all it took was Skip Caray saying "Welcome to Turner Field..."